t me come in and
examine him."

"He is dead."

"Well, but let me. I must!"

"Please come in," she said.

The doctor turned round to the fishermen.

"Go, one of you, and make that girl keep quiet," he said, angrily. "Take
her away out of the house--directly! Do you hear? And the rest of you
stay outside, and don't make a sound."

The fishermen slunk a little way back into the darkness, while Giuseppe,
walking on the toes of his bare feet, and glancing nervously at the
furniture and the pictures upon the walls, crossed the room and
disappeared into the kitchen. Then the doctor laid down his cigar on a
table and went into the bedroom whither Hermione had preceded him.

There was a lighted candle on the white chest of drawers. The window and
the shutters of the room were closed against the glances of the
fishermen. On one of the two beds--Hermione's--lay the body of a man
dripping with water. The doctor took the candle in his hand, went to this
bed and leaned down, then set down the candle at the bedhead and made a
brief examination. He found at once that Gaspare had spoken the truth.
This man had been dead for some time. Nevertheless, something--he
scarcely knew what--kept the doctor there by the bed for some moments
before he pronounced his verdict. Never before had he felt so great a
reluctance to speak the simple words that would convey a great truth. He
fingered his shirt-front uneasily, and stared at the body on the bed and
at the wet sheets and pillows. Meanwhile, Hermione had sat down on a
chair near the door that opened into what had been Maurice's
dressing-room, and folded her hands in her lap. The doctor did not look
towards her, but he felt her presence painfully. Lucrezia's cries had
died away, and there was complete silence for a brief space of time.

The body on the bed was swollen, but not very much, the face was sodden,
the hair plastered to the head, and on the left temple there was a large
wound, evidently, as the doctor had seen, caused by the forehead striking
violently against a hard, resisting substance. It was not the sea alone
which had killed this man. It was the sea and the rock in the sea. He
had fallen, been stunned and then drowned. The doctor knew the place
where he had been found. The explanation of the tragedy was very
simple--very simple.

While the doctor was thinking this, and fingering his shirt-front
mechanically, and bracing himself to turn towards the quiet woman in the
ch